# .....In (reluctant) defense of the 3-time Trump voter **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [March 17, 2026, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524 "2026-03-17T15:21:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2026, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524/81 "2026-03-19T01:20:37Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Except that the alternative is to say “Sorry, persecuted minority - we’d love to give you equal rights and justice and all that, but it might upset the malignant bigots who are persecuting you. But hey - if you can just convince at least half the population that you deserve basic human rights, we’ll consider giving them to you. Maybe.” That more or less is exactly what happened in the Civil War era. Before the war the abolitionists were a perpetually outvoted minority who were regarded as radical fanatics and even would-be proponents of theocracy. If it hadn’t been for the political circumstances of the attempt at secession, chattel slavery might have continued into the 20th century. Equality for the former slaves was as much about the cynical calculation that every newly enfranchised freedman was a guaranteed Republican vote as it was about any ideals of respecting rights. It required making ratifying those amendments a condition for the defeated southern states to have their congressional representation restored to meet the supermajority requirements for amendment; it would never have happened if the slave states had had any real choice in the matter. And we saw exactly how devoted the north was to championing civil rights once Reconstruction ended and the southern states were no longer conquered provinces. When African-Americans began the Great Migration out of the South after World War One, the North actually de-liberalized where civil rights were concerned; this was the era when the new Ku Klux Klan was founded in honor of the southern “night riders”. Apparently northern whites had always been in favor of freedom and rights for blacks living somewhere else. > [@Gyrate](#): > > The _Loving_ decision came at a time when only a minority of Americans supported interracial marriage, and there were a lot of people upset by it. Was it “undemocratic”? Was it “rammed down people’s throats”? Was the decision wrong because of those things? The _Loving_ decision was one of the _fait accompli_s handed down (imposed?) by the Supreme Court of that era. It would have been a much harder sell if for example it had to have been enacted by federal legislation. After the court decision it would have required a constitutional amendment to specifically reverse it, and bigotry didn’t have THAT level of support. But imagine if something like the _Loving_ decision had happened in 1905; maybe there WOULD have been a constitutional amendment overturning it. My point is simply that God does not send angels down out of Heaven bearing flaming swords to defend the righteous. What comes to pass especially in the realm of politics and law is ultimately based on pure power. The USA will ultimately be only as just as the People demand that it be, and the People are far from perfectly just. Currently something like a 57% majority is fighting against a 43% minority, and while the majority has a mandate it does not have an overwhelming mandate. It in fact does take well over half the population, more like two-thirds, to agree to respect the rights of a minority. Liberals would **like** to think that they are strong enough to shout down the bigots; but they’re not. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2026, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524/82 "2026-03-19T01:27:02Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Currently something like a 57% majority is fighting against a 43% minority, and while the majority has a mandate it does not have an overwhelming mandate. It in fact does take well over half the population, more like two-thirds, to agree to respect the rights of a minority. Liberals would **like** to think that they are strong enough to shout down the bigots; but they’re not. What are we actually talking about, though? In a FREE Society, doesn’t everyone have a right to exist? Do the mostly religious bigots really have the numbers? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2026, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524/83 "2026-03-19T02:22:22Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > A lot of people just don’t want to admit that voting for the Republicans is fundamentally about being _morally_ flawed, not intellectually. Suppose they genuinely think that migrants lower domestic wages. Because they mostly do think that. And the arguments against it are pretty non-obvious and require reading and statistics, not something that can come out in debate. Suppose you are a second generation citizen farm worker among the one percent unionized. That’s a small group, but I’ll bet a high proportion of them are for Trump precisely because they think unauthorized immigration harms their union. I can think of arguments both ways, but maybe it is a little true. Perhaps a pure progressive might try telling them that even if we were to (mistakenly) allow that wages are lowered here by immigration, migration increases wealth and well-being worldwide. But I’d think hardly anyone on earth (5 percent?) has a morality that broad if their job is a hard one and their income is uncomfortably low. I’m a never-Trumper. But I do not buy that all the Trump voters are FoxNews automatons. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2026, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524/84 "2026-03-19T22:46:29Z")
An example of an intelligent Trumper: A New York born Jew, Ph.D. in mathematics Univ. of Chicago Thesis advisor Saunders Mac Lane, if that name means anything to you), spent most of career at Univ. of Calgary. Not only unreligious, but anti-religious. He considered separating from his wife when she converted to Catholicism and became serious about it, including trying to indoctrinate their boys. In the summer of 2024, he wrote me that he had twice voted for Trump. He didn’t say he would do it a third time, but he also didn’t say he \*wouldn’t\*. At that point I ghosted him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-reluctant-defense-of-the-3-time-trump-voter/1028524.md?page=4)